


Panic!

by jetblack hotelmirror (lionoil)



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23020942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionoil/pseuds/jetblack%20hotelmirror
Summary: Ryan can't sleep, and he knows he shouldn't rely on his friend to be there for him in the middle of the night but the thing is that is also knows that he will be and that Brendon's maybe the only one who can talk him down from his elevated manic state; maybe they can play video games until they can't stay awake anymore, or maybe they'll talk for a little while, or maybe Brendon won't even answer his phone.
Relationships: Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie
Kudos: 16





	Panic!

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, these are fictionalized archetypes based on real people but this isn't real people, we all know that. The Commedia del'Arte , you know? Anyway I have strong feelings for best friends that are probably too close and especially when they're Bros, you know?   
> CW that Ryan is basically having a manic episode but there aren't a lot of Dark Feelings here.

He's outside in his car, getting up the courage to get out - his hand is frozen to the old metal door handle. It's the middle of the night and he is unable to sleep and he's already cut his hair and taken a bath and drawn on his arm in sharpie and eaten some shredded cheese from the fridge and he can't wind down, he just can't. He knows his best friend can help him, and he knows he absolutely will, and he wouldn't even be angry with him for waking him up. But it feels so juvenile and so stupid to say 'hey I can't sleep, please can you hold my hand?' and it feels even worse to think about waking him up for that. 

He's already here, and so he resolves to text him; it's the wrong 4:20, there's no way he'll answer. If he doesn't (which he won't), he'll go home, and if he does he'll figure it out from there. 

"hey. are you awake?" he types out one-handed, the furthest from a 'U up?' text he could structure with the headache building between his eyebrows. 

Brendon somehow calls him almost immediately. 

"H. Hello?"

"Hey dude. What's up? Sorry, I had a night terror like an hour ago and woke up with a migraine, my phone screen hurts my eyes." He sounds rough and small and quiet from sleep and it tugs at every sinew and muscle in Ryan's entire torso. 

"I. Um. Can't sleep."

"Where are you? Are you at home? I could come over, I'm not even sleeping..." He sounds like he's getting out of bed and Ryan imagines him pulling a shirt over his head before bringing the phone back to his ear and he could almost cry because of course. Of course Brendon would come over. 

Ryan's breath is coming a little too quickly when he answers, but he doesn't think Brendon notices anything. "I am actually outside your apartment. I uh. Kind of just needed..."

"Seriously?!" Brendon sounds happy and not at all freaked out that his weirdo fucking friend drove across town because he was anxious in the middle of the night. "I'll be right down, come in!"

Ryan hangs up the phone and huffs out a relieved laugh, presses his forehead against the rim of the steering wheel for a second to counteract the pressure that had been building. He scrubs his watery eyes and his face and finally brings his hand back to the handle to open the car door. 

He leaves the car, locks the door, turns back to the building to see Brendon sticking the upper half of his body out the door, tee shirt wrinkled and hair everywhere. Ryan feels the tension leave all the muscles in his body, starting with his face, and he returns the grin Brendon sends him. 

"Get in here man, it's fucking freezing!" Brendon steps aside to let him in the main door, then pats his shoulder a few times. He leaves his hand there to guide him ahead of himself into his apartment, shooing Grizabella (the fluffiest white cat that has ever existed) back as he does. She mews at him in a huff and walks away before stopping in the corner to clean her ears. 

Ryan watches her for a solid minute as Brendon walks around to the fridge and pours water for them both; when he comes back to the living room to find Ryan still standing there spacing, he puts one of the glasses in his hand and grabs his other to lead him to the sofa. 

Brendon sips his water for a few minutes, and Ryan thinks maybe it's to try to get him to drink some himself - he's never been great at staying hydrated, especially when he's feeling so up. He nods and drinks some himself, trying to be slow and thoughtful instead of gulping at the first cool touch to his tongue. 

Brendon lets him get about halfway through the glass before he speaks, leaning against the arm of the small sofa with his feet on the cushion next to Ryan, his toes barely tucked under his thigh to stay warm. "I like your hair short." 

"Oh. Thank you." Ryan has almost forgotten two hours ago when he was looking into his bathroom mirror with craft scissors, carefully removing a solid three inches of hair and leaving it in the sink to clean later. "I was uh. Just trying something out. It's really uneven, I need to get it fixed." A close-enough-to-the-truth answer that still has him self-consciously tug on a strand and ruffle a hand through it. Brendon watches him, takes another sip of water. He's not asking what's wrong or if Ryan is okay, because he knows he's not. 

Brendon sighs and stretches over his head to put his glass on the end table, then gestures for Ryan's and does the same. Ryan can see the smallest tiny sliver of skin where Brendon's old and holey tee shirt rides up, and he tastes blood from where he must have gnawed through some skin on his lip. He still feels seconds away from a panicked crying, breath still fast and head still pounding. 

Brendon looks at him for a moment longer, like he's giving him a chance to speak up, but Ryan's jaw feels locked like when his tmj gets bad and when he doesn't say anything Brendon gives in, takes pity on him. 

"Come here." He opens his arms, lets his right foot fall to rest in the ground, and gestures. "It's okay, c'mere."

Ryan toes his shoes off and fights the tears actually falling from his eyes, swipes at them angrily as he folds himself into Brendon, back to his chest and his legs bent up, his arms around him holding him together. Brendon pulls a throw blanket off of the back of the couch and cocoons them into it. Ryan is sniffling and quietly sobbing and huffing and he's furious with himself because he doesn't even have a 'real reason' to be this torn up, and he'd been doing so well and now he's going to have to bring this up in therapy which means he'll have to bring up the insomnia which means his doses will probably get upped again and what if it turned him into a droning zombie again? Would it even be worth it to-

"I got you. Ry, it's okay, I've got you. You're okay." Brendon is squeezing him, talking with his mouth pressed against his temple so hard he can feel the baritone vibrations of his voice through his skull even as a whisper, and he thinks it might be helping his headache the way pressure helps stop bleeding. 

Brendon keeps saying soothing things against him, and when it seems like he's got to be getting tired again, he starts humming instead. Ryan doesn't recognize the song, and he's distracted enough by the whole thing and by trying to place it that he feels his breathing start to return to normal, feels his puffy eyes start to dry and grit, and feels the emptiness of the exhausted uncaring that comes after a complete breakdown. The face of his skin feels tight and dry and he can still taste the metal of blood, but Brendon is still hugging and humming and gently rocking and he feels like maybe he could actually get to sleep after all. 

When Ryan wakes up, it is to Brendon shifting slowly underneath him; there is the softest of blue lights sifting through the blinds as he blinks sandy eyes open. 

"I'm sorry, my leg is so dead." Brendon mumbles, still trying to shift. 

"Oh here, let me-" Ryan tries to shift himself around to let Brendon stretch a bit and somehow topples right off of the couch, successfully bringing Brendon down with him because somehow their limbs had gotten particularly tangled up in each other. There is a beat of still and pained silence before they both are laughing, somewhat hysterically, until Ryan's side hurts and his eyes are streaming again. 

"Fuck." Brendon is wiping his face too when Ryan looks to him, and when he stands up (still favoring a dead leg) and reaches down to help him up, he doesn't question it. He's in that slap-happy state of too-tired absurdity and it doesn't even occur to him to freak out about Brendon holding his hand, limping in front of him and guiding him to his room and pulling him into bed with him, promptly pulling a massive and cloud-like pile of blankets over them and wrapping himself around Ryan with a happy and calm sigh. It's not like they haven't shared a bed before, and the thought skipping around his sleepy mind screeches to a halt as he feels Brendon pressing a kiss into his forehead, just under his sweat-sticky hairline, and whispering a goodnight right into his skin. He waits for a moment for the panic to return and seize his entire lungs and chest, and when it doesn't he lets himself drift to sleep calmly and securely for the first time in longer than he can remember. They sleep like that for a full ten hours, and Ryan doesn't have a single dream. 

\---

When he wakes up again it's mid-afternoon, bordering on evening, and Brendon is awake and still wrapped around him, running his fingers through his hair and breathing deeply and evenly but not enough to be fully asleep. When he senses Ryan wake up, he says 'good afternoon' into his scrappy hair. This of course causes Ryan's body to jerk away and fully awake, standing out of the bed and still seeing things blurrily as Brendon sits up in a puddle of sheets and comforter and confusion. He reaches out to Ryan like he's a spooked horse and says 'hey' in the calmest voice Ryan has ever heard leave his mouth. 

"I. God I'm so sorry. I got to. Go, I should probably leave-" Brendon lets out a sigh tinged with frustration as Ryan goes from anxiously mussing his own hair to clearly trying to bolt, and launches himself from the bed to stand between Ryan and the door to keep it from opening. 

"No."

Ryan is feeling several emotions at once and they unfortunately decide to manifest as the type of anger you feel in your bones. "You can't fucking make me stay, I shouldn't even be here, I need to-" as he goes to reach around Brendon for the door again, he feels his wrists grabbed in strong hands and used to back him up towards the bed again - by the time he realizes Brendon is manhandling him away from the door, his thighs have hit the bed and Brendon has climbed up to straddle him and keep him still. 

"I said no, Ryan. You're fine! Everything's fine, asshole! Take a couple of breathes."

"Your ass is on my diaphragm you fuck!" he yells up into Brendon's face, freeing his arms enough to push him off but not quite getting the leverage he needs. Brendon just leans back with the pressure a bit then presses Ryan's chest back to the bed. 

"I'll get up in three minutes." He reaches for his phone on the night stand and makes a big point out of setting a timer, then throws his phone on the bed above them and crosses his arms stubbornly. "Tell me what's wrong."

"I have to go." Ryan is resolved; he'll wait three minutes, because Brendon is stubborn but never a liar, then he'll leave and he'll deal with his shit and he'll decide if he just ruined their friendship later. 

"Why."

"I have work."

"It's Sunday."

Ryan glares. "YOU have work."

"I called off because my best friend needs me."

Ryan is going to wait in silence for the next two and a half minutes. 

"Ryan- you can fucking talk to me. You know that. About what was wrong last night, and about why you're freaking out right now because I KNOW you're not some homophobe who's afraid to catch the gay. So stop being a totally fucking dickweed." 

Ryan just watches resolutely as the fire and anger in Brendon's eyes fades, and he should be happy about it but the fire just fizzles into disappointment and finally sadness and Ryan feels like shit again, like some rotten and sickly sweet fruit that's only starting to look bad on the outside but it's already contaminating all the others and when you step on it it squishes like a dead rat. He's fighting his hitching breath and tears again, hard-blinking his still-sour eyes, when Brendon sighs again and climbs off of him, stands, and storms out of the room.

Ryan puts his hands over his face and tries to calm his shuddering breathe again, wonders if he can get into his therapist's today if he says it's an emergency because something is obviously fucking wrong with him right now, and there's no way to fix it if he doesn't even know what it is. 

The alarm on Brendon's phone starts sounding above him, some generic electric rock riff, and when he punches in the security code and turns it off he realizes in the sudden silence that he can hear a little commotion coming from the main part of the apartment and figures he might as well see what's going on before he leaves. He ducks into the bathroom to pee and wash his still-so-red face, dries it even rawer with the hand towel, and makes his way into the light of the kitchen where he can now place the sizzling and savory-sweet smells of cooking. 

When he turns the corner, he sees Brendon poking at some fake bacon in a pan, then flipping a pancake in another with a practiced wrist-flick before slamming it back onto the burner a little too hard. 

Ryan doesn't know what to say. He knows he's pissed Brendon off, and he knows he deserves the attitude that rolling off of him like fog, but he doesn't know how to fix it when even that knowledge is threatening to send him into another spin of self-loathing panic because who the fuck did he think he was to treat his best friend like this after he stayed up with him and called off work and now, even as pissed as he was, is sliding a plate of breakfast at him across the island and pouring him a mug of coffee exactly the way he likes it?

Ryan clears his throat. "I need to-"

"If you say you need to leave again I'm going to punch you in the goddamned throat. Sit down and eat your breakfast, and then we're going to talk. Period."

He doesn't know how to properly react to that, but he's always been pretty good at following Brendon's orders when he gets dark and serious like this and the pancakes smell incredible so he sits and takes a sip of coffee and crunches into a piece of facon. 

By the time Brendon is turning off the stove and setting his plate next to Ryan, Ryan has scarfed most of his plate - he was a lot hungrier than he realized with all the emotional drama, and Brendon must have seen it coming because when he spins back around with a carafe to top off both their coffees, he also slides another pancake onto his plate. 

Ryan doesn't know how he makes vegan pancakes taste so incredible because he has absolutely tried and even followed the same recipe. He just must have some magical knack for it. He watches as Brendon stabs his own breakfast with frustrated movements, keeping his eyes down and away from Ryan entirely. 

"I'm sorry." Ryan whispers. 

Brendon sighs again, sets his fork down and wipes at his mouth with a napkin and still doesn't look at him. "You don't have to fucking apologize man. You don't even really have to talk about it if you don't want, but I do have to say I think you should. You just gotta stop freaking out and running away and beating yourself up over nothing." He finally meets Ryan's eyes, and his brows are furrowed and his eyes are shimmering and he just looks so fucking sad. 

He knows. He does know that. But it's one thing to say it and another thing to fight through ever single atom of his body telling him that he doesn't deserve a friend and that he's taking advantage of him and that Brendon doesn't even want him around at all. He doesn't know how to say all that. 

"Last night I was. In a really bad place, really dark." That's not really a great explanation and it sounds so put-upon but-

"I know, Ryan. I know. Look I get it, and there doesn't even have to be a reason, your life can be so incredibly fucked sometimes and you hold everything together so well all the time because you're so fucking strong, the strongest person I know but... it's okay to need help sometimes. That sounds stupid but I feel like maybe no one has actually said that to you."

Ryan nibbles at another bite of pancake, and they sit in silence again until Ryan has to sniff inhale a huge shuddering breathe. He leans into Brendon, pushing his face into his shoulder enough to hurt the bridge of his nose a little and create that sneeze pressure. Brendon folds around him again, leans his head against the top of Ryan's head. 

"Thank you. I really don't know what I would do without you and I feel like all I do is snot on your shirt and treat you like shit and yell at you for trying to help and that's not fair, and I don't know why I'm like this but I am going to therapy and I am trying to figure it out but it just feels so slow like walking through molasses."

"Like Boston?" 

"Fucking exactly like Boston." Ryan snorts a surprised laugh into the side of Brendon's neck and he thinks he can feel him smile. 

"What helps?" Brendon mumbles into Ryan's hair. "When you feel bad like that, what helps you?" 

"Different things. I'm trying to figure it out. You. This." Brendon tightens his arms around Ryan. "Sometimes singing, or a shower, or drawing."

"How are you feeling now?"

"Emotionally hungover and upset that I upset you."

Brendon is quiet for a moment before he presses a kiss so softly into his hair Ryan thinks at first he imagined it. "You didn't upset me, not really. I was upset you were upset. And I was upset I couldn't help you. And that you weren't talking to me about whatever was going on in your weirdo head."

"I just. Couldn't stop, couldn't come down. And I knew you would help, because being around you always does, and I felt guilty for coming over and I didn't want to use you to feel better, and it was just that same spiral I always get into where I feel bad for feeling bad but-"

"You're not using me, Ryan. Don't be a dummy." Brendon pulls away and pushes him lightly back to the sofa, and sits down in the corner of it. He pats the cushion next to him and opens his laptop, fingers skittering across the keyboard until a black and white movie pops up. 

Ryan sits next to him and Brendon pulls him into his side, arm around his shoulders, and tucks them under the blanket again. As the movie starts and Ryan recognizes the opening to the original Night of the Living Dead, he rests his head on Brendon's shoulder, and as Grizabella leaps up to nestle in, Brendon rests his temple against Ryan's head again. 

Maybe he's going to be alright.


End file.
